Guitar – The Beginners Bible (5 in 1): The Practical Guide to Music Theory, Chords, Scales, Guitar Exercises and How to Memorize the Fretboard: Fast And Fun Guitar, #6

By Chris Mac

How to go from total newbie to doing improvised guitar licks, no musical talent needed
Is learning to play guitar still on your bucket list despite years of failed attempts to start?
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In Guitar – The Beginners Bible (5 in 1), here is just a fraction of what you will discover:

• A comprehensive 5-in-1 bundle jam-packed with all you'll ever need to know about guitar-playing
• The must-learn fundamentals of music theory that will help speed up your guitar-learning journey
• How to look cool and prevent injuries while playing the guitar
• Why picking the right guitar is more important than you might think, and how to make sure you choose the most ideal one for you
• The secret to polishing your finger technique for that perfectly played guitar solo
• How to quickly broaden your repertoire of songs by learning this essential musical skill
• The proven way to master improvisation and even write your own music, even if you've never played a note in your life
• 190 easy exercises that take only 10 minutes a day and will double your playing speed and accuracy

...and much more.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: Meyer House Press
• Release date: Oct 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215732793

Book preview

Guitar – The Beginners Bible (5 in 1): The Practical Guide to Music Theory, Chords, Scales, Guitar Exercises and How to Memorize the Fretboard

Fast And Fun Guitar, Volume 6

Chris Mac

Published by Meyer House Press, 2022.

GUITAR: THE BEGINNERS BIBLE (5 IN 1)

THE PRACTICAL GUIDE TO MUSIC THEORY, CHORDS, SCALES, GUITAR EXERCISES AND HOW MEMORIZE THE FRETBOARD

CHRIS MAC

© Copyright Chris Mac 2022 - All rights reserved.

The content contained within this book may not be reproduced, duplicated or transmitted without direct written permission from the author or the publisher.

Under no circumstances will any blame or legal responsibility be held against the publisher, or author, for any damages, reparation, or monetary loss due to the information contained within this book, either directly or indirectly.

Legal Notice:

This book is copyright protected. It is only for personal use. You cannot amend, distribute, sell, use, quote or paraphrase any part, or the content within this book, without the consent of the author or publisher.

Disclaimer Notice:

Please note the information contained within this document is for educational and entertainment purposes only. All effort has been executed to present accurate, up to date, reliable, complete information. No warranties of any kind are declared or implied. Readers acknowledge that the author is not engaged in the rendering of legal, financial, medical or professional advice. The content within this book has been derived from various sources. Please consult a licensed professional before attempting any techniques outlined in this book.

By reading this document, the reader agrees that under no circumstances is the author responsible for any losses, direct or indirect, that are incurred as a result of the use of the information contained within this document, including, but not limited to, errors, omissions, or inaccuracies.

CONTENTS

The Chord Bible

Introduction

1. What is a Chord?

2. Chord Charts and Tablature

3. Major and Minor Chords

4. Diminished Chord

5. Suspended Chord

6. Augmented Chord

7. Extended Chords

8. Exploring Open Chords

9. Exploring Movable Chords

10. Practicing Effectively

Conclusion

Guitar Scales - The Beginner's Bible

Introduction

1. Scales: A Look at the Basics

2. How to Effectively Practice Scales

3. Major Scale

4. Minor Scale

5. Understanding Modes

6. Pentatonic Scale

7. Hexatonic Scale

8. Diminished Scale

9. Relative and Parallel Scales

10. The Scale Catalogue

Conclusion

Guitar Fretboard - The 7-day beginners masterclass

Introduction

1. Everything You Need to Know Before We Start!

2. Why Should You Learn the Fretboard?

3. The Layout of The Fretboard, The Basics of The Fretboard and Getting Started

4. Tackling Strings (Including Exercises To HELP!)

5. Navigating the Fretboard . . . And How to Make It Stick

6. Fun Games to Implement What We Have Learned So Far

7. How to Use Visualization to Integrate Your Learning

8. Other Patterns You Need to Know

9. Repetition Is the Key to Your Success

10. Where to Go from Here and How to Make it Stick

11. BONUS!!! The Road to Mastering the Fretboard

12. BONUS!!! Additional Resources That Will Help You Master the Fretboard

Conclusion

Resources

Guitar Exercises for Beginners

Introduction

1. What is The Purpose of This Book? (And How Can It Help You!)

2. What You Need to Do Before You Start and 5 Mindset Tips to Inspire Growth

3. For the Complete Beginner - 10 Exercises to Master Before You Go Further

4. Getting Your Daily Habits in Check, And How Habits Can Transform Your Guitar Ability

5. Improve Your Stamina - Exercises for Playing Longer & Better!

6. Speed and Precision - Fun Exercises for Playing Faster and With Dexterity

7. Let's Sort Out the Picking Hand & Right + Left-Hand Techniques!

8. Time to Get Co-Ordinated (The Fun Way)

9. Exercises to Help You Master Chords and Arpeggio

10. 10 Guitar Tips Before the Purely Fun Time!

11. Fun, Fun, Fun! Exercises to Put A Smile on Your Face!

12. Bringing It All Together - How to Play Incredible Solos!

Conclusion

Resources

Guitar Music Theory - Made Easy

Introduction

1. Everything You Need to Know Before We Get Started!

2. What Is Music Theory and How It Applies to Guitarists (And the Fundamentals of Music Theory)

3. Let’s Get Started with Scales…Major, Chords, Types

4. Moving onto Arpeggios, Modes & Soloing

5. Diatonic Modes - Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, Mixolydian, Aeolian, Locrian

6. Harmonic & Melodic Minor Scales

7. Mastering Chords

8. Rhythm, Rhythm, Rhythm

9. We Should Always Have Fun

10. Applying Everything We Learned

11. BONUS CHAPTER: More on Creating Your Own Music

12. BONUS CHAPTER: Never Stop Learning

Conclusion

THE CHORD BIBLE

INTRODUCTION

Hello there! It’s great to have you here with me, I am about to take you on a voyage through the world of chords. I promise it will be interesting, educational and fun. As a guitarist, having your repertoire stocked full of chords gives you tremendous abilities and a serious edge over other guitarists with limited chord repertoires.

Chords are easily the most fundamental resource you need as a guitarist to express yourself and your musical ideas. It’s no wonder that it’s one of the very first things you begin to learn as a guitarist.

However, much more than just learning a few chords, it’s of immense importance that you learn and master as many chords as you can. Like I noted earlier, this gives you the ability to better express yourself.

Think of it the same way you’ll look at fluency in a language. You can never be fluent in a language when you only know few words. To speak with an authority and fluency that will make your speech captivating and worthy of a standing ovation or other forms of heartfelt responses from your listeners, you must, as a matter of necessity, have at your disposal a command of more than just a few words.

If you only know a few words of French and you tried to speak to a French person in Paris, you’ll find yourself struggling to communicate a thought you would have easily communicated in English.

You aren’t dumb; you just don’t know enough words in French to be able to communicate those thoughts, regardless of how great they were in your head.

The exact same thing can happen to you in music and guitar playing. You can have great ideas in your head but lack the capacity to express those thoughts on the guitar.

In this book, my goal is to help you overcome this challenge. I am going to help you speak with great fluency every time you pick up your guitar to play.

From the title, you already know that we’re aiming to look at no less than 100 chords. Believe me, that’s a whole lot of chords that you can do so much with.

I’ll not just be dumping these chords on you. I’ll be looking at a number of related issues that will help you make the best use of the chords you’ll learn here.

Using our analogy of words, more than just knowing a whole lot of words, you should also know how to string them up together in the right way.

Imagine walking up to a French man and saying noir pantalon just because I know that noir is black in French and pantalon is trouser in French. Of course, my assumption is that since it’s black trouser in English, it will also be noir pantalon in French.

It will take some French lessons to know that in French, the adjective comes before the noun it’s modifying so the right usage will be pantalon noir.

So, as we learn these 100 chords, we’ll also add tools that’ll help us make proper and efficient use of them.

I feel excited and confident to bring you this lesson. I’ve been playing different musical instruments for over 30 years now. I always like to brag that I started playing the guitar at the age of 9 and that I was self-taught.

Being self-taught is probably one of the things that has helped me the most when teaching others. I had to find ways to understand difficult concepts and once I understood them using my own method, teaching these concepts became a lot easier.

I’ll be approaching this journey with a practice mindset. This will not be one those boring theoretical books. We’ll be dealing with the practical aspect of playing guitar chords from the very beginning to the end.

I can assure you that if you stick with me and complete this journey which we are about to embark on, you’ll be amazed at the improvement you’ll experience in your guitar playing.

I’ll conclude with this word of advice that I always give beginner musicians regarding practicing their instrument. Don’t take on more than you can handle. It’s easy to make a big decision in a moment of high positive energy. The big challenge is going through with that decision when you don’t feel like it.

Know this, you’ll not always feel like picking up your guitar to practice. You must however discipline yourself and commit to spending a specific amount of time every day on your instrument.

Here’s why I say don’t take on more than you can handle.

You don’t have to practice for 2 hours every day. You’ll be amazed at the progress you can make if you can commit faithfully to practicing for just 30 minutes every day.

It may not sound like much, but with consistency, you’ll have gradually covered so much ground.

Remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day, so your guitar skills and dexterity will not be built in a day either. It will take time but you’ll make it with consistent small steps.

So my dear friend, before you pick up your guitar to join me in this lesson properly, I want you to make a silent pact with yourself on how long you will spend practicing the lessons here on your guitar every day.

If you can make a commitment now, write it on the first page of this book so it’s the first thing you see when you open it. In fact, I also recommend you have this commitment written boldly and placed somewhere in your room where you’ll always see it.

I’m really looking forward to the great guitarist you can become if you make this commitment. My greatest joy will be to have made some contribution into the life of someone who became a renowned and highly sought after guitarist. I hope this will be you.

With your commitment made and your guitar dusted and well-tuned, let’s get right into it.

1

WHAT IS A CHORD?

This entire book is about chords so it makes perfect sense that we start off by defining what exactly we mean by chords.

To put it very simply, a musical chord describes a group of notes played simultaneously. Of course this doesn’t mean any notes played randomly as each play is based on specific rules and patterns of which there are a number. It’s the pattern used in the formation of a chord that will determine what kind of chord it will be.

One thing that is however fundamental to all chords is that the most basic form of any chord is a triad; which is a three-note chord.

We’ll look at these more carefully in the next section.

THE BASICS OF CHORD FORMATION

Chords can be regarded as a second level building element in music. What I mean by this is that they are formed from the first building elements which are notes.

So, with notes at the foundation of music structuring, chords come next because each basic chord is formed using three specific notes. The notes used in forming this basic chord, also known as a triad, is what will determine what kind of chord it is or what its name will be.

To understand chord formation, it’s important to understand notes and their relationship with each other. We’ll therefore spend some time here looking at the most fundamental part of any music structure – notes.

A Look at Notes

There are a total of 7 notes used in music and these notes are represented with the first seven letters of the alphabet – A, B, C, D, E, F and G.

These seven are the main notes, however you’ll find five others which are considered accidentals. These accidentals are arrived at by lowering or raising the pitch of one of these major notes by a semi-tone.

These are things you may already know but we’ll go through them just in case someone is just encountering this piece of information for the first time.

To form chords, like I noted above, it’s important that we understand the relationship that each note has with the others. To achieve this, we’ll need to understand what we know as the scale degree.

Scale Degree

The scale degree is a kind of template with which you can determine the relationship of one note with the other. Since this is essential when it’s time to form those chords, I will explain it briefly.

The notes will always follow themselves in the same specific sequence. However, the intervals or spaces between them will always change depending on the starting note.

Let me take it back for a bit so I can explain. See the images below as they will provide some explanation.

Image of Music Notes following themselves in Sequence

From the image above, regardless of where you start, the sequence of notes will always remain the same. Now let’s look at the image below.

Intervals of the Scale Degree

In the image above, another sequence is introduced. This represents the intervals of the scale degree which is based on the value of the note rather than its name.

The seven notes again are: A, B, C, D, E, F and G. There are also seven scale degrees that go with these seven notes. However, the scale degrees can begin from any of the seven notes.

The seven scale degrees are: Tonic, Supertonic, Mediant, Subdominant, Dominant, Submediant and Leading Tone.

Wherever the Tonic starts, all other notes fall in following the sequence. For example, if the Tonic is G, then A will be the Supertonic, B will be the Mediant, C will be the Subdominant, D will be the Dominant, E will be the Submediant and F will be the Leading Tone. That’s the idea in theory.

However, because the notes on an actual musical scales (as you’ll see in an image of the guitar fret below) is fixed, you’ll frequently have notes falling a tone below or above a note resulting in what we call accidentals. I’ll explain this in more detail as we proceed.

Before we go on to fully explain accidentals, let’s first ensure that we’ve completely understood the full implication of the scale degree.

In guitar music, there are two kinds of intervals. These are whole tone (whole step) and semi-tone (half step). See image below.

From the image of scale degrees as shared earlier, we’ll remember that there were specific intervals between any two notes.

Let’s look at that image again.

So between the Tonic and the Supertonic, there’s a whole tone or whole step which, as you can see from the image of the fretboard above, is a move from one fret to two frets away. Between the Mediant and the Subdominant on the other hand, we have a half tone or step which is a single step from one fret to the very next one.

It’s important at this point to state that there’s only one key on which the intervals as given on the scale degree will place the notes exactly on the position of the seven notes as given by the seven alphabets. This key is the key of C, also known as the natural key because it has no accidentals.

So, if C is the Tonic, D will be the Supertonic, E will be the Mediant, F will be the Subdominant, G will be the Dominant, A will be the Submediant while B will be the Leading Tone.

This is called the C major scale. When I first tried to explain how the notes interact with the scale degree and I started from G, I mentioned that what I listed was the idea in theory. I’ll now explain what I mean and with that explain what’s meant by accidentals in music.

I’ll start by stating emphatically that the note names on your guitar fretboard are fixed. These names are based on the scale degree on the natural key which is C.

Since the scale on key C is our reference point, if we were to make G our Tonic like we did in the example much earlier, the note before G, which is F, should be the Leading Tone. However, the interval between the Leading Tone and the Tonic is a half tone but the interval between F and G (using the scale degree on C as our reference) is a whole tone.

Being that the interval arrangement on the scale degree is fixed, the note of the Leading Tone when G is the Tonic will fall on the fret between F and G. Having fallen between the two main notes, it’s referred to as an accidental. That middle point will therefore be identified with either an F with a sharp sign in front of it to show that the value of the note is actually a semi-tone above the real value of F or a G with a flat sign after it to show that the real value of the note is a semi-tone lower than its real value.

See the image below for a pictorial depiction of this scale on your guitar.

Image for G Major Scale

To help you locate the position of all other major scales on the difference keys, I’ll share an image of the first 13 frets on your guitar fretboard with all the notes named. See it below.

First 13 Frets of the Guitar Fretboard and Note Names

Having taken this time to explain notes in as much detail as I could possibly do in this book, we can now look at how chords are formed with these notes.

How Basic Chords are Formed

This book is all about chords, so we’ll look at many of them. However, every chord begins from the very basic form which is known as a triad. This is a simple three-note chord which is formed using three notes.

Every chord has a name and works in concert with some other chords. At the most basic you have three chords working together. These chords are usually named chords 1, 4 and 5. It’s the same regardless of key because it describes the position of the chord’s first note on the scale degree.

A 1-chord will consist of the Tonic (as the first note), Mediant and Dominant. A 4-chord will consist of the Subdominant (as the first note), Leading Tone and Tonic while the 5-chord will consist of the Dominant (as the first note), Leading Tone and Supertonic.

You should be able to deduce the following from the explanation above:

Tonic – 1

Supertonic – 2

Mediant – 3

Subdominant – 4

Dominant – 5

Submediant – 6

Leading Tone – 7

Tonic – 8 or octave.

The above represents the very basic of the numbering used in chord formation. If you go beyond this point, you’ll begin to have the 9 th, 11 th and 13 th. These are just the Supertonic, Subdominant and Submediant on the octave. We will not be addressing this for now.

From the above, a chord can be named based on the number of its first note on the scale degree. Here’s what I mean:

If the chord’s first note is the tonic, the chord can be called the I-chord (one chord). Look through the complete list below:

When first note is the tonic – I chord

When second note is the tonic – II chord

When third note is the tonic – III chord

When the fourth note is the tonic – IV chord

When the fifth note is the tonic – V chord

When the sixth note is the tonic – VI chord

When the seventh note is the tonic – VII chord

Note also that the tonic can also be referred to as the root.

What we have briefly described above is the basics of how chords are formed. As we go deeper into our study of chords, we’ll come across some other arrangements which I will explain.

Open Chords

Now that we have a basic idea of how chords are formed, let us quickly look at some types of chords we will come across on our guitar. There are two basic types and the first one is an open chord.

An open chord is simply a chord which includes an open string. This means that when you hold the chord, there will be some strings you won’t need to hold because in their open position, they sound the notes required in the formation of that chord.

Just as a quick reminder, the notes of the open strings are the same as the names of the strings.

String Names

Note that this image is positioned as if you are looking at the fretboard when the guitar is held by another person. So, it’s moving from the right to the left. You can use the sequence given above to easily remember the names of each string.

When playing a chord that requires the B note, you can hold other notes and leave the B string open. That will make it an open chord. As a result of this, open chords are usually not movable.

That is, they must be played in a given location on the guitar fretboard. We shall discuss open chords in more detail much later in this book.

Movable Chords

Movable chords are more or less the opposite of open chords. While open chords include strings that should be played open, these types of chords do not have open strings and so they can be played at any point on the fretboard, hence the name movable chords.

An important thing to note however is that with movable chords, every move changes the key or value of the chord. This makes these kinds of chords ideal for transposition.

I’ll also look at movable chords in more detail further on in this book.

That’s that with our introduction to chords. In the next chapter, we’ll begin to look at how to read music charts so we can easily read any charts we may come across here or elsewhere.

LET’S RECAP

What do you understand by the scale degree?

How many types of intervals do we have in western music?

What's the other name given for Key C?

What's the name given to the most basic form of a chord?

What's the difference between an open chord and a movable one?

2

CHORD CHARTS AND TABLATURE

Just before we go into looking at the many different chords we’ll be covering in this book, I’ll first need to address the issue of notation and chord charts. For those who may be new to it, this will help you understand how to use this book and some others.

For others who are already familiar with these charts and notations, consider it a refresher course.

Before the current state of things where one could easily and freely share musical thoughts as audio or video using various mobile devices, there was a time when letters took some months to get to the next state. Despite this constraint, people still had to have a way of both retaining their musical ideas and composition and also making it easy for others not close to them to interpret those ideas and compositions.

To solve this, different notations were used for different musical compositions. The most popular of these will be the staff notation which is considered a general music notation style.

However, guitarists have their own unique notation style known as the Tab, which is short for tablature. With a tab, a guitar player can know the chords or notes to be played and how they should be played. They may however, not know the exact timing of the play unless rhythm slashes are included.

Before we begin to discuss tabs and rhythm slashes, we’ll quickly look at chord chart which is what we’ll be using throughout this book.

CHORD CHARTS

These are charts that show exactly how and where a chord should be played on your guitar’s fretboard. It’s best used for teaching chord positions as we intend to do in this book.

The chart is made up of six lines, each line representing one of the six guitar strings and can be laid out vertically or horizontally depending on the orientation being used at any instant. It will also have lines which will represent the fret ridges.

A chord’s position will be shown using circles around the points on the fret board that should be held. Some charts will even add numbers to these circles, indicating the suggested fingers to be used to hold each note.

Below is an example of a chord chart.

Image of C major Chord

What the chord chart above instructs is this: use your first finger to hold the B string on the first fret, your second finger to hold the D string on the second fret and the third finger to hold the A string on the third fret.

Just in case you’re wondering how the fingers are numbered, find below a pictorial explanation:

Image for Chord Finger Numbering

Pointing finger – 1

Middle finger – 2

Ring finger – 3

Pinky/Little finger – 4

The thumb does not play a visible part in holding a chord because its primary role is to provide support behind the neck of the guitar.

There are times when one finger may be required to hold more than one note. See examples below.

The image of G minor chord above shows what is known as a barre chord. We’ll talk about that in more detail later.

I believe you should now be able to properly interpret any chord chart you come across.

TABLATURE

While we’ll not really be using tabs in this book, I just want to quickly introduce it to you just in case you come across it in some music materials for guitars.

Just as with charts, these also have six lines representing the six strings of the guitar. The major difference is that there are no lines demarcating the frets and the lines representing the strings are always presented horizontally.

Numbers are written on specific lines (strings) and these numbers represent the fret number. See an illustration below and note that the thickest string is below and the thinnest one on top.

In the example above, the first set of numbers showed individual notes played one after the other. While the second set of numbers showed a chord, because they were listed on the same vertical line which means that they should be played together.

What we have in the first set of numbers are as follows:

0 on the E string – That’s an open string, making it an E.

3 on the E string – Means third fret so a G.

4 on the E string – That’s the fourth fret which is a G♯ (G sharp).

2 on the A string – That’s the second fret which is a B.

2 on the D string – The second fret position of this string is an E.

0 on the G string – Again another open string which is a G.

For the second set of numbers which I said is a chord because they are written vertically on each other, here’s what we have:

0 on the E string – An open string which is E.

2 on the A string – Second fret and so a B.

2 on the D string – Second fret and an E.

0 on the G string – Open string so a G.

0 on the B string – Open string so a B.

0 on the last E string – Another open string so an E.

The above gives us an E major chord.

Two parameters have been taken care of in our discussion on tabs. With these two values, we can determine the real value and position of a note. However, there is one thing still missing and that is the time value.

The rhythm slash is introduced to tell the guitarist at exactly what point to play a note or chord and how long it should last.

All this new parameter does is tell you when and how long you should play a note or chord. It follows the time divisions that we have in staff notations – whole note, half notes, quarter notes and so on.

See the symbols used in rhythm slashes below

Let’s look at an example:

The example above states that the D note should be played for four counts and the A note should begin from the next four counts and extend for another four counts, making a total of 8 counts (two bars) for the A note. The G note will then be played for the last four counts.

I’ll conclude this chapter by sharing a complete music sheet for guitar players. The song is the very popular Stand by Me by Ben E. King.

Just look at it and see if you can play it. Of course, you can always revisit it if you think you can’t play the chords at this time.

Stand by Me by Ben E. King

LET’S RECAP

What is the importance of music notation?

Explain how chord charts work.

Explain how tablatures work.

What is the major difference between a chord chart and tablature?

How can rhythmic values be added to a tablature?

3

MAJOR AND MINOR CHORDS

We’ve come to the fun part of this book where I’ll begin to actually talk about the 100 chords I promised you in the title of this book.

We’re going to start by looking at the most basic chords which are the major and minor chords.

To every major key, there is a minor key which is based on specific principles. You already know the 7 keys represented by the first seven letters of the alphabet. I also mentioned that aside from these seven, there are 5 others known as accidentals.

These accidentals are A♯, C♯, D♯, F♯ and G♯. Note that A♯ is the same as Bb, C♯ is the same as Db, D♯ is the same as Eb, F♯ is the same as Gb and G♯ is the same as Ab.

While there are arguments about when to use sharps (♯) and when to use flats (b), it’s not a discussion that adds any value to your play so we won’t be talking about that at all.

From what we’ve enumerated above, you can see that we have a total of 12 notes on the scale and each of these is a key. That’s why we say that there are 12 keys in music.

We shall therefore be looking at the different chords we’ll be discussing with respect to these keys.

WHAT IS A MAJOR CHORD?

Naturally, I’ll be starting with the major chord. You’ve already encountered this earlier in the book when I was explaining what a triad is.

A major chord is one that is made up of the Tonic, Mediant and Dominant notes of a major scale. It’s as simple as that. These chords are very important because most of the other chords I’ll be showing you will be built on this or the minor chord which we’ll be looking at briefly.

Let’s now look at the root positions of the 12 major chords. I shall list these in alphabetical order.

A Major Chord

This chord is made up of the following notes: A, C♯ and E.

A♯ Major Chord

This chord is just a fret shift from the position of the A major chord. We retain that same position of notes but add two additional notes to block the two previously open strings.

See the suggested finger positions below.

B Major Chord

The B major chord is made up of B, D# and F#. Below, I have shown two suggested finger positions. The notes are the same but the fingering options are different.

C Major Chord

The C major chord consists of the C, E and G notes. In the root (open) position, it will be positioned as the diagram shown below:

---

C♯ Major Chord

The notes that make up the C# major chord are: C#, F and G#. Because the C chord shown above includes open strings, we can’t just move the C chord position a step forward to achieve the C# chord.

While we can’t move the C chord a step forward to achieve the C# if we can block off the open strings, this will be too tasking for most people. We therefore have a simpler option which is achieved using the second position of the CAGED system. I’ll explain the CAGED system in full detail later in this book.

Find below the C# position I’m sharing for now. Note this chord position begins on the 4 th fret and not on the first fret.

D Major Chord

The D major chord is made up of the following notes D, F# and A. Note that the chord position starts from the third fret and not the first fret.

D♯ Major Chord

The D chord is one of those chords that can be moved around in its simplest form. If you look at the image of the D chord above, you’ll note that there are no open strings to be played. Therefore, to play the D# chord, all we need to do is move the D chord a step forward as shown below:

Note that this chord begins on the fourth fret and not on the third fret as was the case with the D chord.

E Major Chord

F Major Chord

F♯ Major Chord

If we look at the image of the F chord above, we’ll notice that there are no open strings in the midst of the notes to be held. The only open string is the A string which is above all the positions to be held.

What this means is that you can simply move the F chord a fret forward to get an F# chord. The only thing to note is that you must strum from the 4 th string, hence the X added to the A string.

A second option will be to form a barre chord by using your index finger to hold all the strings on the second fret as shown by the second image below.

You should also remember that you hold these chord positions from the 2 nd fret and not the first.

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